Consumer Reports: Nook Beats The Kindle

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by FerretMochaLatte

As for being handicapped accessible, how do you expect a blind person to use a Kindle? Why not have it on their phone with speaker functions for the handicapped or in braille CDs that they can put into CD players?

My cousin has a K3 and she really loves it. The OS for the K3 was updated (finally) to allow for speech out of the box. Speech does not work with all of the keyboard but it does work with all the function keys. The Amazon website hasn't been made completely accessible and she does have an issue with Amazon not being 100% clear on which books have TTS turned off. Other than that, she's really happy to have a dedicated device. Purchasing audio books is rather expensive and she's taking full advantage of the cost of a text ebook.

The main reason that most of the blind people that I know do not want audio books on their phones or carry audio books in hard format (i.e. CDs) is space requirements and bulk. The typical blind person is looking for the same conveniences as the sighted. Having a dedicated ebook reader that does text to speech is great for space and allows blind people to carry around the same amount of books as anyone else. A regular audio books is way too large to have a multitude of books on a phone. Any large audio book in hard format can take up multiple pieces of media which will require a carrying case of some sort.

I've been an Amazon customer for over 10 years now but I've always hated their ebook/dedicated device program. Amazon went a long way in changing my mind about them when they finally became [somewhat] accessible.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But not all devices are locked in, or to phrase it better, not all devices are locked out of other book stores.

I think 'locked out' is a much better way of putting it, and more accurate. Neither device is locked in to a single source. The Kindle has access to fewer retailers.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

I think 'locked out' is a much better way of putting it, and more accurate. Neither device is locked in to a single source. The Kindle has access to fewer retailers.

That is not the issue we were discussing, I thought. We were discussing the use of books purchased in the Kindle store versus the books purchased in the Nook store. Two totally different issues. "Where can I buy books to read" vs. "How can I read the books I buy."

[boswd]

Originally Posted by FerretMochaLatte

I registered for these forums just because of this thread haha. I was looking up comparisons of the Kindle to the Nook and I stumbled upon this.

So, what up! Allow me to weigh in my opinions.

File Formats
I see that a lot of people are supporting the Nook, because of the ePub file format and the notion that you are not locked into the Nook. This is half true as yes you are not locked into the Nook because it supports non-DRM ePub books, but the majority of books you are going to purchase on the Nook are going to be from the Nook’s market, which are DRM protected ebooks. They do have an advantage with Google Books seeing as Google Books only allows users to upload ePub or PDF files. They also have an advantage with ebook vendors outside of the Nook store itself. Feedbooks, which is one of the largest vendors outside of the Nook and Kindle stores, sells exclusive ePub books. They are DRM protected, but I think they can still be read on the Nook.

The fact that Google Books allows PDFs might make Kindle fans happy, but you cannot change the fonts of PDFs. This is a big issue to me. One of the reasons why I bought an ereader is because the font in some of the books that I purchased or read were too small for my tastes. Having the option to increase the font size was a big plus to me, that and your own annotations and space-saving purposes.

It all comes down to digital rights management. Nook fans state that you can buy from other stores, but most stores that I know of that offer DRM free books have their books available in both Mobipocket and ePub. (Check out feedbooks. It is amazing.) It would be nice to see ereaders accept the DRM Free Fictionbook file format, but that may be asking for too much.

One of my favorite authors is Cory Doctorow and he is an anti-DRM activist. All of his books are copyrighted by the Creative Commons license under the public domain. He releases the electronic versions of his books online in either basic text or ePub, I forget. Since his books are licensed under CC, vendors such as Feedbooks or general people take the format and convert it to other formats.

The Kindle
The Kindle came out in 2007 which gave it a 2 year advantage over the Nook. (Technically it was almost 3 because of the delay in shipments of the first version of the Nook.) The Kindle already established dominance in the ereader and ebook market. The Nook came in at the end of 2009.

What I love/hate about the Kindle is that they kept the same design and improved upon it. I was surprised when I saw the design of the Kindle 3, given that I believed that Amazon should have known the direction that B&N was heading when they released the first Nook.

The Kindle sold to its customer based on the slim profile of the device and the battery life that blew the Nook’s 10-hour battery life out of the water.

The Kindle also one-upped the Nook by allowing MP3 files to be played which allows you to load audiobooks to your Kindle. I have a few gripes with this though. The Kindle has limited memory and audiobooks are not small. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is around 40 mb. That book is a small book. A Game of Thrones is close to 200 MB, maybe even more. As for being handicapped accessible, how do you expect a blind person to use a Kindle? Why not have it on their phone with speaker functions for the handicapped or in braille CDs that they can put into CD players?

The Nook
The Nook had an OK startup in my opinion. The thing that hurt them was their delayed release and the operating speed of the ereader itself. The Kindle 2 was snappy at that time, but the Nook was subject to constant freezing problems. I bought the first Nook a few months after it came out. From my experience, I had issues with the freezing OS, the freezing sleep mode, and the poor response of the touchscreen. You can look on the Nook forums at B&N and find that the issues I had were common issues. I traded it in and waited for the Kindle 3.

Although I have a Kindle, I admire the overall approach that B&N is taking towards their ereader. They went with the touch screen approach. I believe this is the right direction because it engages readers as if they were reading a normal book and with the new tablet frenzy, I do not see why they would choose not to go with touchscreens.
The Nook came out after the Kindle, and you have to admit that Amazon is playing a little catch up. B&N has the Nook color which has sold well and now they have the Nook Simple Touch. Amazon would be dumb not to adopt what B&N has already done or else they will fall behind. Amazon is going to release a touchscreen ereader and then they are going to release an ereader tablet similar to the Nook. Once, that happens I will probably jump ship. It is getting kind of ridiculous in my opinion. What started out as another form of reading, be it improved or not, has exploded into this all-out war on features and what not.

Going back to the Nook, it is nice to be able to browse and read within B&N stores, even though I think most booksellers will be closing up shop within the next 5 to 10 years given the explosive rate of ebook sales. They were also one of the first to allow book lending, although limited, and library borrowing. They also support the more widely used ePub file format which I talked about.

Appealing to the casual consumer
The main purpose of an ereader is to sell ebooks and to make the whole experience feel more like reading an actual book. I see that a lot of posters here state that people can use programs such as Calibre to convert non-DRM books or to manage your books, but it defeats the purpose of synchronization and it is a step backwards in what these devices are intended to do. Manually syncing and managing your own music is a tedious task to do. The casual consumer does not want to go through all the work of saving their purchases on different files or managing it via Sugarsync or Dropbox. They want to have one service that backs it up and syncs it for them. They want they book distributor to manage their content for them.

It is not a big issue to most people here, but it is an issue for the casual consumer.

Touch vs. Keyboard
This is a simple matter of preference. I for one love touch screens. I used to have a Blackberry Curve a while ago and I bought an iPod Touch for my birthday when I had the phone. I used my iPod ten times more than I did my curve. I even used my iPod for texting. I grew accustomed to touch screen devices and I have been using one ever since.

The market is also leaning towards touchscreens. With the tablet market booming, it is only a matter of time where you will see buttons and physical keyboards become even rarer than they are now on mobile devices, tablets, and handheld electronics. Apple is dominant in these fields and their products are touchscreen based.

Library Lending
I think what people are missing here is the market takeover potential that the Kindle will have once it releases the patch that allows you to borrow books from libraries. Most library file formats are in ePub. Either Amazon is working on some contract with publishers to have their ebooks that are lent out to libraries to be available in the Mobipocket file format, or Amazon is working on a ePub to Mobipocket file converter, or Amazon is going to adopt the ePub file format to their platform. This should be interesting either way.


Well that’s my long two cents. It looks more like bus fare haha.

I find a few things odd in your post. For one the nooks ability to support non DRM ePub is not the main selling point. You are right non DRM ePub and mobi are probably similiar. These tend to be more obscure publishers and self published authors and out of copyright books.

But the advantage of the nook is it's also reads Adode ADE ePub, then in this case mobi is severly lacking. Adobe ePub is where you can find all of the mainstream authors and publishers, NYTimes Best sellers etc.

And to add to that Google books has been selling "in" copyright books form the major publishers for quite awhile now. It's not just the old scanned out of copyright anymore. They are a fully functional ebookstore wth many top titles.

and I wouldn't say the market is leaning towards touchscreen, it in the fast lane heading to touchscreen town. Any loyal kindle fans who think different are only fooling themselves and will be in for quite a shock when Amazon jumps on this bandwagon.


I don't agree fully with your assement about Calibre, Calibre is probably the most must have application on your computer if you are jumping into digital ereading market. No device offers this level of organization and converting. It also allows people to not be so "locked in" if you will to a certain device.

But I do think you are right about the average "joe", Calibre might as well be in latin as far as they are concerned. Which is too bad, it's such an invaluable tool.

Also the first generation nook had an mp3 player as does the nook color, so the kindle hasn't been one upping them in that department. But the nook str does not.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by ApK

That is not the issue we were discussing, I thought. We were discussing the use of books purchased in the Kindle store versus the books purchased in the Nook store. Two totally different issues. "Where can I buy books to read" vs. "How can I read the books I buy."

Well it seemed to be the issue in the post I quoted, so I was just referring to that, and the locked-in/locked-out concept. It may not have fit into one of the five tangent discussions differing from the thread topic.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

Well it seemed to be the issue in the post I quoted, so I was just referring to that, and the locked-in/locked-out concept. It may not have fit into one of the five tangent discussions differing from the thread topic.

I know. It's tough to have thorough debate when the topic keeps changing.
Fortunately for me, my position is the same on most of them: Lock-in/Lock-out is a non-issue that is over-stated, trivially avoided, and of practical concern to almost no one.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by ApK

I know. It's tough to have thorough debate when the topic keeps changing.
Fortunately for me, my position is the same on most of them: Lock-in/Lock-out is a non-issue that is over-stated, trivially avoided, and of practical concern to almost no one.

Yeah it's hard to keep up. I agree lock-in is over-stated.

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by ApK

I know. It's tough to have thorough debate when the topic keeps changing.
Fortunately for me, my position is the same on most of them: Lock-in/Lock-out is a non-issue that is over-stated, trivially avoided, and of practical concern to almost no one.

Trivial for anyone technically inclined (who knows to look for deDRM tools). But a huge hurdle for everyone else.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

Trivial for anyone technically inclined (who knows to look for deDRM tools). But a huge hurdle for everyone else.

Trivial for everyone. Find me this 'everyone else' who is having an issue.
'Avoiding' does not only mean stripping DRM or need to be a technical matter. See below:

We have the following groups of people:
1. People who can handle it themselves technically-- This is a bigger group than naysayers claim.
2. People who know someone who can do it for them technically-- This is perhaps the largest group.
3. People who can't do, can't have it done for them, or can but are opposed to doing so for their own reasons. Among these people:
3a The majority buy from the vendor integrated on their device, never need to read on any other device or shop anywhere else and will never be affected by the issue. Issue avoided.
3b. Some of those simply choose not to buy from DRM stores on principle. Not everyone cares about the so-called mainstream. They use their readers for the millions of DRM free public domain, indie, niche, specialty, direct from author, small house, and even a few mainstream options that provide DRM free content. Issue avoided.
3c. People who are stuck with books they can't read, or who are stuck without books they want because of format/drm restriction. These are the only people for whom this is an issue. I have NEVER ENCOUNTERED ONE OF THESE PEOPLE. WHO HAS? Polls here can't seem to identify anyone. I think this group, if it exists, is so close to a null set that no one needs to care. QED!

ApK

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by ApK

Trivial for everyone. Find me this 'everyone else' who is having an issue.
'Avoiding' does not only mean stripping DRM or need to be a technical matter. See below:

We have the following groups of people:
1. People who can handle it themselves technically-- This is a bigger group than naysayers claim.
2. People who know someone who can do it for them technically-- This is perhaps the largest group.
3. People who can't do, can't have it done for them, or can but are opposed to doing so for their own reasons. Among these people:
3a The majority buy from the vendor integrated on their device, never need to read on any other device or shop anywhere else and will never be affected by the issue. Issue avoided.
3b. Some of those simply choose not to buy from DRM stores on principle. Not everyone cares about the so-called mainstream. They use their readers for the millions of DRM free public domain, indie, niche, specialty, direct from author, small house, and even a few mainstream options that provide DRM free content. Issue avoided.
3c. People who are stuck with books they can't read, or who are stuck without books they want because of format/drm restriction. These are the only people for whom this is an issue. I have NEVER ENCOUNTERED ONE OF THESE PEOPLE. WHO HAS? Polls here can't seem to identify anyone. I think this group, if it exists, is so close to a null set that no one needs to care. QED!

ApK

OK, for the sake of argument, I give you: My Mother.

She loves her Sony PRS-350. But I hate the Sony store and have encouraged her not to use it because, you know what? I'm not going to get into why. We don't need that here.

She can't buy from Amazon and she can't buy from B&N because of the DRM/format incompatibility with Sony. So that leaves, of the "main" stores, Kobo. AFAIK, anyway.

And even Kobo is confusing for her, because it's not as simple as "hit a download button and save the epub to your reader drive, Mom". You've got to use ADE or try to coax the Sony Reader software to load everything up and ARGH. Calibre is easier, but the Kobo downloads are ACSM files, and Calibre doesn't open those, AFAIK.

This is an issue in our household except DING! she fits into Group 2 and her daughter can handle all this stuff behind the scenes. And I do it because she's my mom and I love her. But if I got run over by a bus tomorrow, she'd literally have to give up eReading, because there's no one else in her life that knows how to do this stuff. And that's sad and stupid and unnecessary.

Locked-In/Out IS an issue, imho. Saying that there are workaround doesn't make it go away. It's not gonna stop me from getting a reader I think is best for me (and mom) and it's not gonna stop me from using the store I think is best for me (and mom), but it WOULD stop my mom, if I wasn't around to handle it for her. And that's not right, in my Long Haired Hippie Opinion (LHHO).

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

Trivial for anyone technically inclined (who knows to look for deDRM tools). But a huge hurdle for everyone else.

I just don't think this is a huge burden to the non-technically inclined. Lock-in doesn't affect their daily lives. They have their chosen readers, and they download books from the stores for those readers.

The only people this really affects are people who are switching readers, and it doesn't even affect some of them.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I just don't think this is a huge burden to the non-technically inclined. Lock-in doesn't affect their daily lives. They have their chosen readers, and they download books from the stores for those readers.

The only people this really affects are people who are switching readers, and it doesn't even affect some of them.

What if they don't like the reader store that is associated with their reader? What if they can't access the reader store associated with their reader? What if they find that particular reader store confusing to navigate?

Am I the only person in this thread with non-techie eReaders in the family who have to ask me to handle all this for them???? I'm dreading the day that Dad gets a Nook/Kindle and Mom starts wanting to read HIS books on HER Sony.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

What if they don't like the reader store that is associated with their reader? What if they can't access the reader store associated with their reader? What if they find that particular reader store confusing to navigate?

Am I the only person in this thread with non-techie eReaders in the family who have to ask me to handle all this for them???? I'm dreading the day that Dad gets a Nook/Kindle and Mom starts wanting to read HIS books on HER Sony.

LOL! That is why, if my mom were to eRead, I'd get her a Kindle. Actually, since Mom is very frugal and would rather have library access than more/easier buying, maybe a Kobo but I would have to walk her through every checkout, probably.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

LOL! That is why, if my mom were to eRead, I'd get her a Kindle. Actually, since Mom is very frugal and would rather have library access than more/easier buying, maybe a Kobo but I would have to walk her through every checkout, probably.

Ah, she really likes the touch interface and the 5" screen, though. Those were really her only requirements, so the Sony 350 it was.

I've actually got a YouTube video on "getting books from the library and using ADE to put them on your device" for her, but she still finds the whole process confusing. I don't blame her -- it's just not her "thing".

[ApK]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

OK, for the sake of argument, I give you: My Mother.

You mean:
"for the sake of argument, I give you: My Mother...please!"
<rimshot>

That's funny on few levels.

But seriously, if you were hit by a bus (and your mom could stand to look at the Sony without bursting into tears thinking of you) she'd more likely forget your long hair hippy reasons for not shopping at Sony, and just buy from there, because it's easy. That puts her in 3a with I presume many eReading mothers and grandmothers.

Another option, if you are not adverse to stripping DRM, is you set her up with Calibre and the plugins before you walk in front of another bus, and show her how to do the one drag and drop she'd need to add to the process.

Also, without your interference---uh--guidance maybe she'll trade the Sony for a new Nook or Kobo with on-device shopping.

By the way, Google Books is also available to her, I believe.

Work-arounds don't mean there isn't a problem, but a T intersections isn't a dead end just because you can't go straight.
There are option. Options which simply eliminate any lock in/out.

But even if we allow that your mom is in 3c...anyone else?

ApK